Taxable property values are rising 7 percent or more in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and neighboring communities in the latest batch of numbers from the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office.
According to preliminary figures for the upcoming fiscal year, the increase is 7.44 percent to $4.94 billion in taxable property value in Royal Palm Beach, where Village Manager Ray Liggins said last week that the uptick helps budgets keep up with rising costs. “We get to keep up with inflation,” he explained.
Municipalities use the data to help prepare their fiscal year 2026 budgets.
All communities are losing revenue from an expiring countywide half-cent sales tax that went in part toward civic building projects, but the climbing property values tend to help keep basic tax rates, known as millage rates, steady.
“It looks good for this year,” Liggins said. “It balances.”
In Wellington, the increase in taxable value stood at 7.17 percent to reach nearly $13.29 billion, according to figures released June 26 by the appraiser’s office.
That means that most property owners will pay more in taxes, even if tax rates remain unchanged. One key factor cushioning the blow is that many full-time residents have a homestead exemption, typically denoting a primary residence and limiting how much taxes can go up in any one year, generally a 3 percent cap.
“The majority of residents, more than 60 percent, are homesteaded in Wellington,” Deputy Village Manager Tanya Quickel noted last week.
In June, she told the Wellington Village Council in a budget presentation that a resident with a $450,000 homesteaded home can expect to pay about $32 more in taxes because of increased assessed value. That would be more like $111 for a $450,000 non-homesteaded property.
The percentage increases in taxable property value in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach came in slightly below the countywide average of 8.18 percent.
Quickel said that’s because some other places in Palm Beach County are building more new residential and commercial properties lately.
Palm Beach Gardens, for example, saw a 9.64 percent overall increase in taxable value to $21.76 billion, with $596 million in “net new value,” meaning new construction.
In West Palm Beach, the overall increase in taxable value was 9.42 percent to $25.49 billion, with $614 million in new construction.
In contrast, the increase in taxable value attributable to new construction was $101.7 million in Wellington and $59 million in Royal Palm Beach.
One exception in the western communities is the fast-growing community of Westlake, where taxable value jumped a county-high 27.23 percent, boosted by $239 million in new construction. Then again, it’s a relative newcomer as a municipality, starting from a smaller base and featuring an overall taxable property value of $1.64 billion.
In Loxahatchee Groves, taxable value increased 8.02 percent to about $660 million.
For Palm Beach County as a whole, taxable property values increased 8.18 percent to $343 billion from 2024 to 2025. That is according to the 2025 preliminary tax roll that the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office submitted to Florida’s Department of Revenue and to local taxing authorities.
The total market value hit $528.8 billion across the county, though not all of that is taxable because of exemptions and other factors.
New construction is helping drive the increases, Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Dorothy Jacks said.
“For the second time in our county’s history, new construction topped $5 billion,” Jacks said. “This is new value that is being taxed for the first time this year, adding revenue to many districts.”
Last year marked the first time new construction exceeded $5 billion, officials said.
Like others in Palm Beach County, residents in the western communities will soon learn more about how all the increases in taxable value translate into what they pay in taxes.
Notices of Proposed Property Taxes and Non Ad Valorem Assessments will show each Palm Beach County property owner the value of their property, proposed tax rates and public hearing information. The notices are scheduled to be mailed Aug. 21.
